SEC will make decision soon on future football schedules

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- The Southeastern Conference plans to make a decision in the next month on future football scheduling.

Commissioner Mike Slive said the league plans to do so before the league's meetings in Destin, Fla. in late May.

The potential options are to have eight or nine games, with our without permanent crossover opponents. Ole Miss and Mississippi State play Vanderbilt and Kentucky, respectively, under the current eight-game format.

Alabama coach Nick Saban has pushed for a nine-game schedule, arguing that an athlete should be able to play every SEC school during the course of his career. That is not the case now, after the SEC added Missouri and Texas A&M in 2012. But not all his peers feel the same way, and it is the largest remaining problem caused by expansion.

Slive did not give his opinion, saying there are plus and minuses to both formats. He was speaking at the Associated Press Sports Editors' Southeast Regional meeting at the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

In a wide-ranging conversation that lasted an hour, Slive touched on a number of subjects. Much of the focus was on a proposed change in college athletics, and the autonomy that the SEC and the other five major conferences seek.

"If autonomy is granted to the five conferences, the full cost of attendance will be one of the priorities to discuss once we have the autonomy that we seek," Slive said. "At that point in time there has to be a process among the 65 institutions that comprise the five conferences to seek legislation."

Slive said that athletes would have a "voice and a vote" in the legislative process, though the details of that are still needing to be sorted out.

He also touched on the 10-second play debate, which put SEC coaches on both sides of the aisle this spring. Slive said if he had an opinion he would "be squeezed to pieces," but found fault in the way the process was handled.

"We have a competition committee that meets every year to look at the game, how the game is being played," Slive said. "What is the relationship to offense and defense? Interested people that care about the game. That would have been a perfect subject for someone to look at the game itself, that cared about the game, and then come up with an interpretation and only then it goes to the rules people if the committee recommended something in the long-term interests of the game."

Slive said he has not given thought to ideas about athletes being able to earn, through some form, something closer to their market value. Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel was given as an example.